We thought it was a cool little incentive. You guys did too, given the number of new signups we saw, and apparently others agreed – it showed up on a variety of sites.

Then, someone abused the system, and ended up reserving all of the remaining codes for themselves so that actual users were left in the dust and when some people tried to get their avatar gear, it was already taken. We even saw the codes show up on ebay.

We are flattered that our avatar prop is so popular, but frustrated that someone abused the system to reserve a bunch of codes for themselves and shut out legitimate users in the process. We’ve now ended the promotion for the skateboard. If you signed up for the newsletter (thanks, BTW!), got the invite for the gear and weren’t able to redeem your code, we will be making it right: we will send you a code in the next few days for a different prop (a Windows Phone foam finger):

I believe that even though this was an awesome idea, it was flawed in alot of ways. First of all, this is free marketing so why not make an infinite amount of items that one can download. Next, folks who were already signed up to insider should of received the item first.